Page 30 - The Studio First Edition - April 1893

Spitalfields Brocades

obtaining favour first in the congenial climes of
PITALFIELDS BROCADES. BY
Italy and France. Following this historical and
LASEN BY LIBERTY.
interesting re-introduction, sericulture and the
To those in sympathy with the recent manufacture of silken materials have gradually
S patriotic movement inaugurated on be- assumed the proportions of a vigorously pro-
half of the English Silk Brocade Industry of Spital- gressive European industry. Even so far back as
fields, it may be interesting to briefly recall a few the beginning of the sixteenth century, the craft
incidents in regard to the introduction, gradual de- or mystery of silk-weaving was recognised as one of
velopment, and subsequent decline of this beautiful the most flourishing industries of France. But it
art industry. was at a somewhat later period that it was carried
Without attempting to trace the remote and from France over to England, where it did not
semi-mythical origin of sericulture to China or assume any considerable importance until about
other regions of the mystic East, where the rearing the middle of the sixteenth century.
of the silk-worm and the process of silk-weaving In 1585 numbers of skilled Flemish weavers,
were jealously guarded monopolies for untold driven over by the devastating War of Indepen-
centuries prior to the dawn of modern Western dence, sought and obtained refuge in Great Britain
Civilisation, or to inquire too curiously whence from the terrors of Spanish domination, and
came the etherial silken vestments so scathingly localised their cult, notably in and around the county
satirised by Juvenal for too lavishly displaying the of Norfolk, and particularly the process known as
personal charms of the fair dames of ancient flowered and striped " silk-weaving. Almost
Greece and Rome, it is perhaps more practical to exactly one century later, the Revocation of the
pass over to the days when Europe, through the Edict of Nantes compelled thousands of the
enterprise of her adventurous mediaeval navigators, Huguenots of France to flee their native soil, and
once more joined hands with Far Cathay. From again a very large number of skilled Protestant
this era to the end of the fifteenth century seri- workmen sought protection in England. Many
culture in Europe was definitely acclimatised, among the Huguenot refugees were silk-weavers,
and settled in Spitalfields. And although both the
Flemish and Huguenot weavers formed indepen-
dent coteries in other districts, yet Spitalfields from
the first became, and to-day remains, the centre of
hand-loom work in English-made silks.
That until a comparatively recent date Spital-
fields not only maintained but strengthened the
important position it secured in the seventeenth
century may be gathered from the fact that in the
year 1825 the number of hand-looms in use in the
district was estimated at 24,000, the number of
persons employed 6o,000, the amount of silk used
one-and-a-half million pounds, and the average
annual value of the work produced some
£2,000,000 sterling.
In the year 186o, however, the English silk
trade suddenly lost the fostering care and fiscal
protection which for two preceding centuries it
had enjoyed. The Cobden Treaty" ruined an
erstwhile thriving industry by brusquely casting
aside protective tariff rates without note of warning,
and thus inviting competition with meretriciously
cheaper Continental goods. In but a few short
years the number of looms in Spitalfields was
reduced to some 1200, and the operative weavers
to about 4000.
"OLD SATTER, OLD TAFFETY, OR VELVET I Had the competing Continental goods been
("Cryes of London," Tempest Collection) frankly offered as of inferior quality as well as

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